Posts in the Devlog category

March update

Hello, Freelancers!

Here’s where we are: All comments from the latest batch of proofreaders have been dealt with. The book’s layout is more or less finished, including all but a handful of illustrations – I still need three more chapter illustrations and some other smaller ones. But I’m confident we’ll get there. Before Sunday, I’ll have a decent semi-finished PDF to show off to potential partners.

There’s also a more or less finished convention scenario, to be run at this year’s LinCon (In Linköping, Sweden). The scenario’s readable and playable but visually it’s still a slightly janky bullet point list written entirely in Swedish, so there’ll be a little while before I can offer it to non-Swedes I’m afraid. I’m looking forward to having time to translate and polish it a little bit, to make a proper playtest / demo scenario.

Now, what else… The “finished” PDF means I’ll hopefully be able to secure a partner for handling printing and so on, which is something I really want to have a handle on before launching a Kickstarter. Because that’s what’s next: the crowdfunding campaign! Right now I’m hoping to be able to run it early summer, but I can’t promise anything. I think we’ve all been burned by enough Kickstarter creators making promises they can’t keep 😊

Anyways, I think that’s all for now.

Holiday update

Alright freelancers – happy holidays, merry christmas, happy festivus or whatever you prefer depending on your megacorp, clan or sect.

I’ve mostly been going through comments and improving the text. It’s slowly coming together! Now that I’ve got two weeks off for the holidays, I hope to be able to speed things up a bit. The work continues – on the book, on a playtest package, on a convention scenario, on trying to source illustrations…

Speaking of illustrations I’ve gotten hold of at least some of the pieces I was looking for, so that’s very exciting. Sometimes working on a book like this can feel endless, so it’s nice whenever you can get some concrete milestones done and feel like things are moving along.

Also; I’ve gotten a few messages on the subject of illustrations and illustrators. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to everyone! I’ll try to rectify that in the coming weeks.

Anyway; I hope you all are well and will have a nice winter holiday season.

See you in the new year!

Hello mutants!

No, that’s not right. 3e notwithstanding, there’s not a lot of mutants in the Chronicles.

So… Hello Freelancers!

Sorry for the delayed update; things out in my Real Life™ have been a bit crazy for a bit. My day job is being a high school CS teacher, and I love it but – sometimes there’s just a lot to do, and my time for hobby projects (which is what this is, after all) shrinks for a bit.

But here is some news:

  • The second round of volunteer proofreading and commenting has finished, and I am currently using what free time I have to go through all the great comments. I am extremely grateful to the people who’ve participated, and the book will be a lot better for their efforts.
  • I have gotten permission to use art from the old 1e books. The goal for the final product is to use as much new stuff as possible, but there are a few really nice pieces in 1e that I’d really like to use. And also, this means I can use old art as “placeholders” – to possibly be replaced if the kickstarter goes well. I have created a list of illustrations and the next step will be to source some high-quality scans of the originals.

Speaking of illustrations – I’m thinking of adding one or two more artists to the project; if you’re an artist and you’re interested, drop me a DM and I’ll take a look at your portfolio. It’d be especially nice to get some diversity, so female or non-cis artists are very welcome.

September is here, and I have some news!

First of all, I’d like to introduce Per Gradin – the excellent artist who’s been doing a lot of work especially on character portraits for the introductory adventure in the book, as well as some other stuff here and there – this, for example, is a prime example of Luna City law enforcement =)

There’s also a PDF! It’s 167 pages long! It’s technically printable! You could print this and it’s be recognizable as a product, as a game. The text will still go through some more iterations of proofreading, editing and corrections but I feel like I can confidently say it’s not a complete disaster. Aside from the above-mentioned Gradin stuff, there’s not much art yet, but there’ll be at least a few more pieces before the kickstarter.

It’s always a nice feeling when a project reaches this stage. There’s a lot more work to be done, but the end is in sight.

The plan right now is to get this PDF signed off on and approved, hopefully with some more art in it. Then use it to finalize deals for printing etc.

And then to start serious planning for the kickstarter, while revising the text and the illustrations.

This is the pre-Kickstarter version. A sort of “minimum viable product”. If we get funded at just the basic level, this is what you’re getting – it’ll be a PDF containing the entire game and as many pieces of art as I can reasonably afford to buy on my teacher’s salary. Better KS result = more illustrations! Among other things.

In other words, this will be a very classic Kickstarter – not a large corporation minimizing risk*, but an indie creator trying to finance some more artwork and a print run.

(* I’m not against large rpg corporations minimizing risk, to be clear. It enables them to do weird stuff they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.)

End of summer update!

(Image is an early sneak peek of what the layout looks like right now; from the Cults chapter)

Despite a sweltering (for Sweden, anyway) heat, progress continues to be made. Right now, the primary focus is on producing a “feature complete” PDF with all illustrations produced so far. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with the last few comments from the first batch of proofreaders.

As soon as those comments are dealt with, I’ll be gathering a second batch of proofreaders and letting them loose on the text. Then I’ll deal with those comments, and update the layout… This is an iterative process! 😊

Ideally I’d like to launch a kickstarter before year’s end, but I’m not promising anything. There’s always delays – people have other jobs and responsibilities, including me. Things get in the way.

Anyway, the PDF will be the starting point for a lot of “next steps”. Making deals and persuading people the project is viable is much easier when you essentially have a finished product. And that includes you! We’ve all seen kickstarters crash and burn because someone underestimated the time or money commitment, or just had the concepts of a plan when they launched…

My next update will probably be a quick art-related post… I do have some pretty artwork already delivered, and I want to give you a little sneak peek 😊

In the summertime

Sorry for being a bit late; I try to strive for making one of these posts at least once a month. I’ve been a little busy with life outside RPGs – like I said in the last update, in my day job I’m a highschool teacher and the term just ended. Always a stressful, busy time.

But that doesn’t mean work has grinded to a halt by any means – here’s where we are at:

  • Layout is on a little bit of a pause as I’m travelling right now. I expect to be home again next week though, and restart work on the preliminary layout.
  • I’ve just finished going through all the really nice comments and suggestions I got from the first round of outside readers. All low-hanging fruit has been dealt with; now I’m gearing up to do another pass and handle the more difficult stuff. The comments that require a bit more work.
  • When I’m home again I’ll also pick up where I left off in terms of illustrators and illustrations. I don’t have a huge AAA studio budget pre-Kickstarter but I want to make sure to have at least enough pieces to do some kind of version of the game either way. I want to make sure people see this game isn’t just a pipe dream. There’s been far too many projects like that on KS already.
  • I’ve GM:ed one group through one of the two scenarios I’ve created so far. It went well, though the characters never did manage to actually solve the mystery. Not completely, at least. But we had fun, and the game seems to do what I want it to. Not that the mechanics come into play very often, but the scenario design works pretty much the way it should. I’m going to GM the same scenario again for a different group this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyways, that’s all right now I think. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you think something’s missing in these updates. I’m hoping to be able to share some more worldbuilding and details on what the rules look like soon, too 😊

Update time!

I’ve received the completed version of Bergting’s cover and while it’s going to have to be a little bit under wraps for now I gotta say it’s looking really, really good. As expected, given the artist, but you know. Still.

He’s also expressed an interest in doing more work for this project, and who am I to say no? So yes, life is good.

In other news, the first round of proofreading’s pretty much done and I’ve begun sifting through all the comments and suggestions. Fixing the low-hanging fruit first – imperfect grammar and so on. Next, I’ll work on the more juicy stuff, the comments that might require bigger changes and additions. I’m very grateful to the people involved.

We’ll see how many proofreading passes the text needs – I’d rather do one more pass than release this game half-finished, as it were.

Either way, while working on the text I’m also continuing to work on a preliminary “prototype layout”; a complete-but-not-final PDF to show to various stakeholders and publishers in order to move things forward.

I’m looking forward to summer break – as a high school teacher here in Sweden, the past month or two has been very busy with grading and other tedious parts of that job. The 7-8 weeks until school opens again in the fall will be a good opportunity to work on Luna City Blues…

Still no set date for the kickstarter, I’m afraid – A lot of stuff needs to be in place before I’m comfortable taking peoples money. I’ve seen way too many projects fail post-KS because they didn’t have all their ducks in a row.

Yeah, that’s all for now I think. Please feel free to write any questions you have in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them =)

Pre-convention update!

Things have been kind of wild at my day job as a computer science teacher the past month or so, but some progress has still been made on the game. Illustrations are coming in & looking quite nice – I’ll probably make some sort of announcement and tell you guys about the new illustrator pretty soon, and show some of his work.

There’s a more or less feature-complete layout of the Imperial chapter. No art except the stuff I make myself, but I’m pretty happy with it. There’s still a lot to tweak, but I’m aiming to have most of not all chapters “done” when the Kickstarter launches (I’m still hoping for this autumn).

The first small group of proofreaders have started their work, improving the text. I’m nervous as usual, but it’ll be fine. I know some of you would like to help, and your time will come! There’ll be more chances.

I’ll be at swedish game convention Gothcon this weekend – I won’t have my own table, but I’ll have Luna City Blues materials (pictured) in my backpack and if people find me there will probably be some characters generated.

Internal playtesting

Internal playtesting underway! A total of two and a half hours or so of background generation (and plenty of collaborative discussions) yielded four very different* investigators, ready to take on the mystery of a disappearing informant, somewhere down in Luna City’s bowels.

The locals seem suspicious of outsiders and not very impressed with the investigators’ hastily constructed cover story of being a press team from a lifestyle magazine… But something is clearly weird down here in Corridor 17; no signs of the informant yet but the group has stumbled on an unrelated crime scene where two people have been killed in an extremely violent fashion. And didn’t the last report from the informant include something about mysterious deaths? Who’s killing the locals?

In other words: it’s a completely normal weekday in Luna City!

(* OK, so thanks to some… interesting die rolls the characters may be different, but they all share a few quirks – so three out of four at some point woke up with a four year memory gap and some weird nightmares? Might be time to tweak those background event tables a little…)

Update!

Update!

So here’s what’s new:

  • The website redesign is online! There’s a landing page, an FAQ and a devlog (which is basically just the same as the updates I make here). Check out https://lunacityblues.com/ if you’re curious!
  • The intro adventure is, tentatively, “done” pending additional playtesting. This means (the first complete draft of) the main rulebook’s text is completely done! yay!
  • A second playtest adventure will be ready within a week or two, and playtested internally.
  • The layout process has begun – right now it’s mostly experimental, trying to get the basic shapes and flow right. I have a bunch of ideas, but we’ll see how well they translate to the actual page =)
  • I’m in talks with another illustrator, and some pieces are in the works. I think you’ll like them. We’ll see.
  • I’m putting together a “playtest package” with an adventure and either pregen characters or a compact-form chargen. The first external playtesters will be sourced locally through personal contacts or forums I frequent. I’ll let you know when I’m accepting applications from external playtesters!
  • I might make that playtest package available to people who want to try running something at a con. I haven’t decided yet.
  • I’ll also start recruiting proofreaders soon. Again, the first batch will be sourced locally and when I’m ready for “outsiders” I’ll let you know.

(As usual, everything is subject to change)

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